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September 28, 2007

Yes, it's a brand new fall television season, which means you can look forward to many posts espousing the greatness of How I Met Your Mother (aka, the best show on tv). I love the show because it's so funny I can't eat while I'm watching for fear of choking - and also because it's still trying to rally a regular audience (despite critical success), so CBS is pulling all sorts of great social media tricks to generate word of mouth about the show.

It started with the MySpace page, which gained traction after the famed Slap Bet/Robin Sparkles episode last season. Then, they launched Barney's Blog (which is actually hilarious) and started offering extended scenes from various episodes - making the page a must-see for die hard fans looking for a little more. The series premier continued the trend - not only was unseen "hot tub scene" footage up on MySpace, but Marshall's hysterical threat to Barney about www.slapbetcountdown.com of course turned out to be a real website. The countdown currently stands at roughly 52 days - I would be shocked if it didn't evolve as the date draws closer.

If you've heard about the show, and want to get caught up - check out the MySpace page right now, they have a great 2-minute rundown video of the first two seasons. (But, keep in mind this is a 30-minute comedy folks, you can watch it whenever you want without much background and enjoy it...unless you're stupid).

September 27, 2007

The city of Ann Arbor lost a legend last week. Second only to maybe Bo Shembechler, Shakey Jake Woods was an Ann Arbor institution - one of the city's best known residents.

Arriving on the scene in the early 70s (or so it's told), Shakey Jake roamed the streets with his guitar in white loafers and flare pants, a knee length coat and hat - the style of which appeared to never change as the years went by. When my family moved to Ann Arbor in 1990, I remember my favorite part of going downtown was "looking for Jake". Over the years, Jake branded himself and Shakey Jake t-shirts and "I Brake for Jake" bumper stickers started to appear... and they're still around today (joining Drake's Sandwich Shop shirts as one of the quintessential Ann Arbor native items). However, he lived on his social security checks and the kindness of local merchants who would purchase his stickers or give him some freebies here and there.

"Rest in peace? Are ye crazy - man's got work to do! He's got to keep watch over the old A-town. Keep those wings flappin' and those fingers strummin' over these weary streets. Don't leave us Jake. You will always be missed."

"He would take his coffee and set up on the corner, sometimes when it was still dark out and well before anyone else was up. One day I asked him why he was up so early. He said, 'I gots to do what I do. Ain't nobody else who can do what I do.'"

"Let Jake's message be a lesson to us all: Money means nothing. Life is a gift. You can spread happiness to thousands of people just by putting yourself out there, treating people like equals no matter who they are, sharing your heart and your spirit, playing the music of your soul, and being yourself."

What's cool about the website, and some of the videos of individuals sharing their favorite Jake moments is the variety of people who loved him. Old, young, black, white, residence and college students and everything in between - everyone that calls themselves an Ann Arborite. It's a good sized city, but people like Shakey Jake brought us all together in a small town way. RIP Jake!

...As a student at Wellesley College, I will admit that I spent some QT over at Harvard in the early '00s. I used a tragic fake id that said was 31 and 5'3" to get into The Grille (now classed up and called The Redline), went to what one could loosely call "football games", and hung out at some Final Clubs. That being said, you can imagine my non-surprise at this Craigslist post, which features some d-bag soliciting a date to his Final Club's alumni reunion.

I can't imagine why his relationship "ended disastrously", can you? Where are all the girls who want to date a domineering, pretentious, classist, racist, academic snob of a dreamboat who promises to take them to an event 10 times cooler than their high school prom?

The post has been removed from Craigslist, $10 says this guy looks like he was hit in the face with a sack of nickels.

Note: I was emailed this tip the day it happened, and didn't post anything, then it showed up on Gawker. It could have been me damn it.

September 19, 2007

Welcome to The Crapper. The Crapper is a new feature on The Catch Up Lady where I will dump (get it?) funny/interesting things that I've come across in the last few days which are notable, but don't work as stand alone posts. If you have an item you'd like to see put in The Crapper, let me know.

My friend Liz just sent me a link to Pocket Shots, which are shots of liquor that come in a little plastic 50 ml pouch. My first reaction was, "Why didn't I think of that?!" Then I remembered that I'm too cheap to buy a product like this, and that the easier solution is to stash a Poland Spring bottle filled with vodka in your purse, ask the bartender for juice and spike your own drink in the bathroom. Not that I, or anyone I know have ever done that.

Friend #2sent me a link to this article the other day, which details State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha lawsuit against God. According to Wired, the suit, "contends that God, along with his followers of all persuasions, 'has made and continues to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons.' Those threats are credible given God's history..." It goes on from there. I was going to make a joke about how I would like to sue God to get rid of all Republicans (except the ones I like), but then I realized this guy was a Democrat. Fucking liberals.

Went to a cool event tonight for the launch of Spoonful of Sin, which is a dessert of the month club. You sign up and they send you a gourmet dessert once a month. If the desserts taste anything like the 75 samples I stuffed in my pie hole tonight, I highly recommend it. Roland Mesnier, former White House Pasty Chef of 20+ years and spokesmen for the company, was also in attendance. He informed me that Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan had the biggest sweet tooths of all the President's he worked for, and also made several hilarious jokes during his remarks to the group. I would post the picture I took of him in his chef outfit, but the lighting in the gallery combined with my crappy camera phone left me with a picture that looks more like a Klansman than a pastry chef to the dignitaries - so I'll demur.

Just caught wind of this on the eliptical at the gym (turns out that my gym still exists, despite the fact that I never go) - apparently a known prankster from the Jimmy Kimmel show, Jake Byrd, stole the show at a press conference held by OJ Simpson's legal representation earlier today.

The only video on YouTube doesn't do this scene justice, so I encourage you to check out the MSNBC video here. (Of course there is no embed for this video on MSNBC - when are these people going to get wih it? Dear MSNBC, I want to put your branded video on my blog. Please facilitate. Thanks bye.)

The highlight reel includes Byrd, decked out in the outfit seen above (that would be an "I Heart Famous People" hat and "OJ 07" shirt) chomping gum, screaming "YES!" when OJ's release is spoken of, the lawyer glancing nervously over his shoulder, and a press conference finale of Byrd going for a high five and screaming, "Up high! Don't leave me hanging!" Only in America.

When I first looked at the 15 finalist videos up on the Heinz site a few weeks ago I noticed that they fell into three categories 1) cute, nostalgic ketchup spots that fit nicely with the mush you expect Heinz's ad agency to come up with 2) videos that looked like they were made professionally by a group of video producers* and 3) unfunny crap. (*My professionally produced suspicions were confirmed when I received an awful pitch email from some women encouraging me to vote for the video that "her friend's company" made.) Predictably, the winning video, "Kissable Ketchup" fell into category A - depicting an Ohio man's stepson getting a kiss on the cheek from a young girl after giving her the final squirt of ketchup.

Overall I think this contest generated a lot of positive buzz for Heinz, but given that I follow the brand closely and create social media campaigns for a living - I have some strong feelings on how this could have been done better:

Fix the submission snafu. Over 25% of submissions were DQ'd when the entry rules apparently changed, instead of launching a second contest this fall I would have extended the entry deadline. (Read more here)

Allow video embeds. Embed codes were never offered on the Heinz site, and were disabled for the 15 finalist videos hosted on the Challenge's YouTube Channel. Creating word of mouth is a huge part of this sort of campaign, and disallowing embeds denies individuals the chance to virally expose others to rich, branded content.

Direct links to videos. If you ain't gonna do embeds, at least give us a direct link to the video to use! This was not an option on the Heinz site or the YouTube channel. There is nothing worse than getting an email that says, "Check this out, click here, scroll half way down the page and click on the third video from the right." You lost half your potential click throughs during the scroll.

Utilize YouTube. If you're going to have a channel - use it! Allow all the bells and whistles like embeds, view counts, links, honors, etc. It's what makes YouTube different and more interactive than your campaign site.

Ride The Hype. Post the winning video as soon as possible and leave finalists on the site and YouTube Channel as artifacts of the contest. If you go to the YouTube channel right now there are no submissions, no winners - just a banner telling me to watch the Emmys (which were on last night) and a grey box saying the contest is over.

Overall it was a great idea, with mediocre execution. It will be interesting to see how the second Top This TV Challenge goes this fall - I can't recall a company doing this sort of consumer generated contest so soon after another - so time will tell if there is such a thing as too much ketchup.

September 13, 2007

This is an exchange between two of my best friends from Wellesley (names withheld to protect the innocent - or in this case, maybe the more guilty).

Friend #1:are people always saying "no worries" to you and/or things like "you sound angry"? because lately people have been doing that to me, and I was thinking that I'm not angry, i'm just maybe moving at a different speed than other people, and i tried to think of another friend who may be doing that, and i thought of you. so....does that happen? my landlord told me to "climb down from my tree" last week. i miss you!

Friend #2's response:People are always telling me I "look angry" or I "look upset" and my response is like hey fuckers I am not always fucking smiling! So that shit pisses me off. People also tell me I talk too fast. Which I find really fucking annoying.

September 11, 2007

I'm kind of obsessed with Nike's Jim Mike women's soccer ads featuring Rainn Wilson, better known as The Office's Dwight Schrute. Jim Mike is lobbying to do PR for the US Women's National Team, promising, "to make their public relations fantasies come true."

I think the reason these ads stand out to me is because they are being played non-stop on MTV. Ok, seriously. They stand out to me because they are so antithetical to Nike's traditional ads - which generally feature someone much buffer than me, demonstrating how games are meant to played when one is at the pinnacle of the sport. These people are usually sweating Gatorade while being filmed in some emotional and dynamic way.

And let's not lose track of the fact that this is the most hilarious use of the double first name combo since Steve Dave in Mallrats. (If you get this reference, please for the love of God, click here.)

Check out one of the videos below, you can see the rest by going here and clicking through to the Jim Mike videos on TXTS From the Road.

September 09, 2007

My dearly beloved. We are gathered here today to remember the life of the 2007 Michigan Wolverines. Just a few weeks ago, the team seemed so healthy and strong - it was not a fool's dream to think that they would be with us for months to come. However, as so often happens, our hope blinded us to a dark and cold reality. Our opponents spread offenses, our own befuddled defense, and key players' injuries - oh my. Oh my, they have lead the team down a road from which they will not return. I ask our Lord and savior, Bo Schembechler, to watch over our boys as they ascend to the promised land. May we all find peace here on this cold earth in the promise of a clean Big 10 conference slate, and aggresive off season recruiting.